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Politico
Obama,
the puppet master
By Jim Vandehei and Mike
Allen
2/18/13
President
Barack Obama is a
master at limiting, shaping and manipulating media coverage of himself
and his
White House.
Not
for the reason that
conservatives suspect: namely, that a liberal press willingly and
eagerly
allows itself to get manipulated. Instead, the mastery mostly flows
from a
White House that has taken old tricks for shaping coverage (staged
leaks,
friendly interviews) and put them on steroids using new ones (social
media,
content creation, precision targeting). And it’s an equal opportunity
strategy:
Media across the ideological spectrum are left scrambling for access.
The
results are
transformational. With more technology, and fewer resources at many
media
companies, the balance of power between the White House and press has
tipped
unmistakably toward the government. This is an arguably dangerous
development,
and one that the Obama White House — fluent in digital media and no fan
of the
mainstream press — has exploited cleverly and ruthlessly. And future
presidents
from both parties will undoubtedly copy and expand on this approach.
“The
balance of power used
to be much more in favor of the mainstream press,” said Mike McCurry,
who was
press secretary to President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky
scandal.
Nowadays, he said, “The White House gets away with stuff I would never
have
dreamed of doing. When I talk to White House reporters now, they say
it’s
really tough to do business with people who don’t see the need to be
cooperative.”
McCurry
and his colleagues
in the Clinton White House were hardly above putting their boss in
front of
gentle questions: Clinton and Vice President Al Gore often preferred
the safety
of “Larry King Live” to the rhetorical combat of the briefing room. But
Obama
and his aides have raised it to an art form: The president has shut
down
interviews with many of the White House reporters who know the most and
ask the
toughest questions. Instead, he spends way more time talking directly
to voters
via friendly shows and media personalities. Why bother with The New
York Times
beat reporter when Obama can go on “The View”?
At
the same time, this
White House has greatly curtailed impromptu moments where reporters can
ask
tough questions after a staged event — or snap a picture of the
president that
was not shot by government-paid photographers…
Read
the rest of the
article at Politico
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